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Should Monetary Policy "Lean Or Clean"?

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Should Monetary Policy Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper No. 34 http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/institute/wpapers/2009/0034.pdf Should Monetary Policy “Lean or Clean”?* William R. White August 2009 Abstract It has been contended by many in the central banking community that monetary policy would not be effective in “leaning” against the upswing of a credit cycle (the boom) but that lower interest rates would be effective in “cleaning” up (the bust) afterwards. In this paper, these two propositions (can’t lean, but can clean) are examined and found seriously deficient. In particular, it is contended in this paper that monetary policies designed solely to deal with short term problems of insufficient demand could make medium term problems worse by encouraging a buildup of debt that cannot be sustained over time. The conclusion reached is that monetary policy should be more focused on “preemptive tightening” to moderate credit bubbles than on “preemptive easing” to deal with the after effects. There is a need for a new macrofinancial stability framework that would use both regulatory and monetary instruments to resist credit bubbles and thus promote sustainable economic growth over time. JEL codes: E5 * William R. White is currently the chairman of the Economic Development and Review Committee at the OECD in Paris. He was previously Economic Advisor and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. +41- (0) 79-834-90-66. [email protected]. This paper grew out of a presentation at a Monetary Roundtable at the Bank of England, and has benefitted from comments made at conferences at Bank Negara Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, and at the Centre for Financial Studies in Frankfurt, Germany. The views in this paper are entirely personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System. Should Monetary Policy “Lean or Clean”? By William R White A. Introduction Should monetary policy lean against the wind of the expansion phase of credit upturns, in order to moderate boom conditions? Clearly, no one would question the desirability of leaning enough to reduce associated inflationary pressures. But should the reaction be stronger than that which near-term inflation control might seem to warrant? In particular, should policy be tighter than otherwise, given evidence of growing “imbalances” in the real economy1 or increasing systemic exposures in the financial system? Or should an alternative strategy be relied upon to deal with such problems. In particular, should monetary policy be content with trying to clean up afterwards, once the boom has turned to bust? Indeed, should central banks go even further and preemptively ease policy in order to short circuit the bust altogether? As a matter of logic, the answer to the lean or clean question must depend on an evaluation of the relative merits of each approach, since alternatives cannot be evaluated in isolation. The dominant view until quite recently seems to have been in favor of cleaning up afterwards. However, the practical difficulties encountered in trying to do so over the last eighteen months seem now to be altering the balance of earlier arguments. Indeed, the current set of economic circumstances facing the official community is as difficult as any seen in the postwar period. Growth is slowing, and quite sharply in both the advanced and emerging market economies. For a time inflationary pressures were also rising, particularly in the emerging market economies, though they now seem to be receding in the face of an unexpectedly sharp slowing of near- term - growth prospects. In the major financial centers, many markets are dysfunctional and some are not operating at all. Many financial institutions have had to be closed down, nationalized or supported in some way by governments. Moreover, it cannot be ruled out that the economic and financial situation will worsen substantially before it eventually improves. The purpose of this paper is to suggest steps that might be taken to help avoid a repeat of these difficulties in the future. Evidently, this presupposes some understanding of what caused today’s difficulties in the first place. Liberalized financial systems seem to be inherently “procyclical”.2 That is, there are endogenous cycles in which some piece of good news leads to both an increased demand for and supply of credit. This affects positively both asset prices and spending, contributing to still more optimism and providing still more collateral for still more loans. Eventually, all these trends overshoot levels justified by the initial improvement in fundamentals and rational exuberance becomes irrational exuberance. In the end, the bubble bursts and the 1 Imbalances are defined here as significant and sustained deviations from longer run trends. Such deviations raise the possibility of mean reversion, perhaps with associated macroeconomic costs. Evidently, such an outcome need not be inevitable, given that underlying fundamentals might have changed enough to justify 2 these unusual observations. Nevertheless, mean reversion seems a quite common historical phenomenon. 2 For a fuller description see Borio and White (2004) Page 2 process of speculation and leverage which powered it goes into reverse. Such processes have been seen repeatedly in history. The great recessions beginning in 1825, 1873 and 1929 all shared these characteristics3, as did the more recent Nordic, Japanese and South East Asia crises4. Moreover, in each instance the crisis emerged suddenly and unexpectedly, and without any significant degree of accelerating inflation beforehand. There is a great deal of evidence to support the view that we are witnessing something quite similar today. The “New Era” and “Great Moderation” proclaimed in the latter part of the 1990’s led to a variety of excesses which suddenly collapsed around the turn of the century. This was met in turn by an unprecedented degree of monetary easing in the large industrial countries, and subsequently by very easy monetary policies in many emerging market countries (accompanied by massive foreign exchange intervention) as they tried to resist upward pressure on their exchange rates. The upshot was that global interest rates, both short and long, were held at unusually low levels for much of this decade. These lower rates contributed (a demand side effect) to a massive increase in monetary and credit aggregates. A further contribution to this credit growth (a supply side effect) was made by sharply declining lending standards. These easier lending terms were said at the time to be justified, both by an overall reduction in the risks to be managed, and by improved risk management capacities. In both the advanced and emerging market countries, many borrowers obtained access to credit who would never have been able to do so in the past (subprime mortgages, for example) or did so on unusually easy terms (cov-lite corporate loans, for example). Speculation and leverage are also thought to have expanded significantly, not least through the use of new structured products with high levels of leverage imbedded in them. These developments contributed to record high global growth rates, until quite recently. Inflation, moreover, was quiescent for an unexpectedly long period under the influence of a variety of positive supply shocks, not least the process of globalization5. However, at the same time, these financial developments were also contributing to the gradual buildup of at least four major “imbalances” affecting both the financial and real sectors of the global economy.6 As to the former, most asset prices (not least housing) rose to unprecedented levels. The exposure of financial firms to risks of various sorts, as can now be clearly seen with hindsight, also increased sharply. As to the latter, household saving rates in many countries (especially the English speaking ones) fell to zero or even below, while the ratio of investment to GDP in China rose to almost 50 per cent7. Again, such National Income 3 On this see Schumpeter (1934) 4 See Kindleberger and Aliber (2006) 5 White (2008a) provides a fuller assessment of the relationship between globalization and domestic inflation. 6 As noted above, imbalances are defined here as significant and sustained deviations from longer run trends. Logically, individual deviations might be explained in a variety of idiosyncratic ways. However, when a wide variety of imbalances emerge simultaneously, this rather points in the direction of a joint underlying cause. This is pursued further below. 7 From a Wicksellian perspective, troubles arise whenever the financial rate (say, the long bond rate) differs from the natural rate (proxied by the prospective growth rate of the economy). Estimates of each for the global economy show that the financial rate fell below the natural rate in 1997, as the global growth rate of potential accelerated, and the gap continued to increase at least until the middle of 2008. See Knight (2008). In the English speaking countries, where the financial system has focused increasingly on lending to the household sector, consumption rose as a result. In China, where consumer credit is much less freely available, it was investment (often subject to political influences) that rose to very high levels. The crucial point, however, is 3 that both imbalances seem to have a common source; namely, a large and longstanding gap between the natural and financial rates of interest. Page 3 Account numbers are unprecedented in large countries in the post war world. Finally, a number of countries with highly advanced financial systems and associated low household saving rates ran very large trade deficits. These were largely financed by capital inflows from surplus countries that had accumulated reserves in the process of resisting exchange rate appreciation.
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